When I fist started blogging just about two years ago on www.joshwhitford.com I had no real idea on what I was going to talk about. I love business and I love marketing and eventually that became the theme of the posts I continued to write.
In the beginning I figured I would learn how to rank for keywords and then continue to do so. One of the first keywords I targeted was the term Unconventional Marketing. I thought the term was just what I was looking for as my starting point and target audience.
I eventually ranked for the term after trying for a couple of months and now I continue to hold the first spot in Google roughly two years later. For the record, I got most of my link love by changing the title on my site to the Unconventional Marketing Blog and then people continually linking to my site with that description. Pretty easy huh?
I recall when I showed up #1 for the first time. I wrote a post talking about being #1 for the term and how proud I was. Then a thoughtful commenter showed up and told me how my term sucked because according to all major sites, the term gets little or no traffic to speak of. Way to rain on my parade, right?
So I shuck it off and continued without much thought.
A few months later someone emailed through my site asking for me to develop a marketing plan and help them execute it for them. The deal turned out being a solid 5 figures and low and behold they found me through the term Unconventional Marketing. Crazy.
Not only was that one deal a success, but I have had 3 deals in the 5 figures result from that one search term… So much for no search traffic, huh?
What is the point of all of this rambling? Simple. Just because someone comes and rains on your parade about something you worked hard to get doesn’t mean that you should take what they say as fact or the law.
It also means keywords and search terms that get “little” or “no” traffic to speak of can result in large deals.
So many people get hung up on the numbers, how many people visit, how many page views, how many this, how many that and so on. Really the numbers are deceiving and can be manipulated pretty easily to give people what they want… more numbers. Instead, focus on what will help you reach your goal. Will 5 buyers get you closer to your goal? You bet. Can you find 5 buyers out of 10 visitors? You bet.
Before you think about keywords and how “little” traffic they get according to whatever source, realize that until you actually rank for the term, you’ll never know. I can tell you that people search and click on Unconventional Marketing about 3-4 times a day or 1,200 times a year. But out of those 1,200 visitors I’ve made a fair chunk of change. Get the point?
Try whatever you can and see the results for yourself. What if I had given up on the idea of unconventional marketing because some naysayers analyzed and determined I was wrong? What have you given up on because of others’ opinions? What do you think would be fun to try just for the sake of trying?
What is Unconventional Marketing?
Doing what the majority doesn’t and getting results…
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I agree with you josh keywords and search terms can bring alot of traffic to your blog. hope for the best with 'unconventional marketing'
Josh,
This is a great example showing people that it doesn't matter if your ranking term gets a lot of searches. What does matter is that people are ready to buy or use your services when they get to your website after finding it through that term.
If you only receive 1 visitor per day looking for “Unconventional Marketing” and you land 1 five figure deal per month from those 30 visitors, then I think it was definitely worth your time working on ranking for this term.
Congratulations with your success.
Brenda
Good stuff man. The important thing I took out of this, however, is that while you traffic for the term was minimal, it was extremely targeted. i mean, seriously, anyone searching for “unconventional marketing” is looking to make a purchase fo sho!
thanks again for the inspiration bro!
AL
This post now gives me hope for “acrobatic chinese midget thong washer.” It's basically, if I got what you want, you only need one visitor. Thanks for breaking this down for us.
Hi Josh
Great story! The thing to remember is of course that high volumes of traffic is great for your site but you will only really ever get them to convert if the traffic is targeted.
Your buddy obviously did his research with the traffic potential for that term; however he obviously did not consider the monetary potential for being number one for “Unconventional Marketing”.
You my friend are living proof that there is money to be made from it. Just tell your friend that high traffic doesn’t pay your bills, but fat wads of cash do!
Later Josh
Scott
Thanks for stopping by and for the well wishes.
Like you said conversion is key. I'll take one buying customer any day over 10,000 non buying. Granted if you had 10k visitors you should be able to figure how to monetize that. Thanks for stopping by
Frank where in the world have you been, its been a long time. How are things in your neck of the woods?
I agree and could probably have had much higher conversions had my site been designed to funnel leads from everyone who entered. Maybe a redesign coming in the future…
Funny you mention that because that has turned into a successful business with the likes of http://www.rentamidget.com/ no joke. I think you are on to something.
Yeah the guy wasn't even my friend but he sure rained on my parade telling me it was a worthless term when I first started out, ha. You are correct in that if the term is what someone is looking for and you are the solution there is a high chance of converting that into something more meaningful.
Thanks for stopping by. Like the design of your site.
I swear that I have a real life midget story to tell you and Al next time we conference (drink). From the 1970's and it was a girl midget. It's the honest truth but you will think I made the entire story up.
Thanks buddy
I wish i could take credit for the design but alas it is just a little old wordpress theme. I cant even remember where I found it haha.
Scott
There's always someone willing to shoot your efforts down and you're right one shouldn't let someone else's negativity spoil their sense of achievement.
Ranking #1 for a search term is and achievement and will bring you traffic, maybe not as much as those popular search terms, but then most of us can't afford to spend that amount of money to rank well for those ones.
Hi Josh,
Great story. I love the focus on what even a single visitor can be worth, as opposed to pure volume. I've got a couple of domains like that … that are probably only going to get 15-30 visits a day, even when they rank #1 … but with at least one of them, I know from experience that one person (of the right type) finding and partnering with me can be worth literally 10s of thousands of dollars over the years.
Money or time. Ranking for Marketing takes a ton of effort. Possible yes. But hope you have a couple years to dedicate to the effort, then what? When you are there needs to be somewhat appealing to that crowd to be effective. Thanks for stopping by.
Goes to show how important it is when picking keywords. On one hand you never know till you try but on the other it might be worth throwing $20 on a ccp campaign to figure how viable it is (at least from a business prospective).